Sylvain Souklaye

It transpires that, like all idiots who have more of a career than a future, I must work, if only to carry on renting a rotten piece of carpet and a toilet block on the brink of collapse belonging to my poisonous landlord. As for me, I have an eye for detail and I’m a great lover of sealife, and so, in order to combine utility with pleasure, and despite the careers advisor’s prediction of a factory career, I became a dishwasher in a restaurant in the centre of town.

Between the midday and the evening table service, I go round in circles like a kind of human pet, my neighbourhood too far away to be able to stop. So to keep myself busy, I (become tame) as I sketch out a material happiness on each shop window, the suspension of my banking privileges replacing my heart. As if putting things into bonds could ever fill the void of human existence. A storm brews and my voice bursts with pride. There’s nothing left but to stroll at a leisurely pace to the rhythm of the overcrowded bus-shelter, its benches christened by pigeons to assert my power, my arse acting as emissary and the large bomber jacket on my back like an occupational army. From this rock in the middle of the urban sea, my sense of truth and I are fair judges of the odd puppet-like specimens (affranchis) with views on everything and nothing, always expressed out loud.

“le déserteur is the subject of a narrative, a work of art, a beacon of communication”le déserteur is the first native “art and literature” exhibition. Its mission is to provide the experience of being at an art exhibition on an iPad. But le déserteur is more than just a digital art app combining photographs, short films, music and literature, its goal is to transform the iPad into an ephemeral work of art itself.The app consists of two consecutive and imbricated exhibition rooms: “Anonymous bodies” and “Labyrinths”. le déserteur questions the role of the anonymous bodies in the cathartic act of desertion leading to the endless and protean quest for identity amid the labyrinth of life.le déserteur -the deserter- will keep its promises. It will be available 365 days on the App Store before deserting. During this year, le déserteur will also materialise IRL pop-up exhibitions.

Here we are. It’s one of those nights where tiredness beats me square on my downcast brow, my drifting neck, my weary shoulders, my motionless loins. But it’s already too late to go to sleep and insomnia comes easily. My pinhole camera has nothing left to offer after my night shift and without enough sleep it is hard for me to use my full imagination. So what’s left? Writing? What else? And after that? I have given up two years of my life as a sample, flagship product. So do you like my drug? Now you must queue up to refresh yourself at the store or walk to the bookshop. Essentially, apart from a bit of megalomania, I’m hollow, but big enough to eliminate.

No more alcohol, no alcove, not enough twilight, never any dawn. At anytime, I take the only opportunity available to me. Nervously, I search for the black cord, all tangled up. I strip it apart, following the ball of wires, finally arriving at the TRS connector to stick into the Mac. Click, connect. Once it is plugged in, I feel like a part of something and that reassures me and ressembles me. Because the thing in question asks for no answers from people.As I return from my matrix, I consult the definitive mood of my playlist, hesitating between the avant garde and the basics. The showcase or the dust? You wonder which, but at this point in my tale is hanging on by the tiniest pin, only a half-truth could satisfy me. Even if it was well-advertised and corrupted by a radio edit.

In short, rather the memory of one of these moments suspended than an absence where you remember a past spent in pairs that had no future, that knew no fear or bounds. Just you and me in the silence as if we were born to start a revolution, as an alternative to death, lasting 365 days from this same placenta made of peripheral concrete. But nostalgia saves no one from the additional imperfection that makes handcuffed strangers out of us. And yet, at this point of my endless narration, again and again I must pretend just like you to save what is left of our museum, but without knowing why.

In the end the tax return form is of no importance, childhood always takes us back to the time of the first scrapes, internal struggles, mysterious fears of darkness, of monsters, of the end and that long shadow that chases after us right at our heels. Apart from that, it’s a long path, directionless and psychotropes, phoney over-the-counter medecine. Life is a placebo that is well worth all of its illnesses. So as not to make the most out of the present, together. It doesn’t mean anything, it’s just to hear cries of joy around you. And what if there was no one there?

All you can do is fill up this emptiness, a battle worthy of that word that deserves a block calendar and even a part-time mother. Bit by bit, little by little, piece by piece, you evaluate the situation, make links, consider the pros and the cons. All that counts is the function of the rhythm and the kind of mechanism. There is nothing beautiful, perfect, ideal or idyllic about an indeterminate suicide mission. To make little letters to be read with caution, a contract is still necessary. But life is a gift that you can’t refuse and no one questions such a present. So sell your life dearly, and sell theirs at a discount, buy time behind masks, a deception worthy of this mascarade.

I will not say good evening or my name and certainly not my nickname. I am quite happy to take the place that is rightfully mine on the righthand side of mankind’s first freestyle. I am only there to tell a story. Nothing more, nothing less. Nothing amazing, just my ordinary self. An ordinary thing ressembling my face, with last nights bruises, the breath of a grocer, the smell of a stranger and the sound of my playlist. Right now, right here, just you and me, forever and ever, alone, together, together, together…

It was as if their eyes were telling me to go back to the box that they had so graciously assigned me and let me rot in peace… Atmosphere.

As time goes on, the scene replays itself in front of the coffee machine in a consanguineous circle. Even in my sitting room, face to face with another one of those idiots on TV. In a situation such as this, I would rather be plagued by a criminal suspicion, even one of those class inferiority complexes. But, unfortunately, I feel comfortable in my own skin wherever I go. So, next time I meet that stranger and size him up like a slab of meat or a bag of water and the qualifications hanging around his neck, I often hope to take it up with the man himself and not with his humanity!

As the days pass by professional masks emerge from childish shells. Time washes over me nurturing my cemetery of memories and, unconsciously, as usual, I surround myself with a cour des miracles where every satellite imitates the sun. Meanwhile, as communitarianism makes a profit in a single click at the same time taking part in a Third World War, my universe is reduced to informing mirrors.

But between the cult of boundaries and the dictatorship of the coffee machine, despite myself I end up coexisting with my fellow man. Since they take me for one of those domesticated idiots, I might as well make up a story worthy of fraud.

The tiny room takes a while to quieten down, its warmth inducing underage bucolic comas. For now, the room plays frigid as it turns its back to me, languourously stirring a mojito with a manicured index finger before licking it in slow motion watching me all the while. Afterwards, wrapped up in a mini cassock it cries out against gang rape. But its principals, morality, values, passion, convictions and fear disguised by complicit whispers turn into applause for no apparent reason. For the unknown neighbour was the first to entertain the vain hope of taking over the show. Despite their continuous stomping, they will never be part of the show because they are too far away from the mike. We are not equals, only in business, friendly so far as it is possible, for I want nothing and I can say everything at once. Then all you can do is watch someone who is no longer there. That’s why at this moment, I will give you everything right down to the last fragment of my soul but you will never possess me. Some have a mouth, others have ears, such is the food chain!

I assent in order to cut through the bars and my branch, so as to increase my ration, without mistaking my dreams for cease-fires. It seems that your life is better off spent in chains, your conscience subdued, your fate walled-off, your words empty and your heart no longer beating. Tick, tock. That’s why my hands are cold, my embraces selective and my affection amnesic. Behave, go round in circles, make yourself scarce only to end up back at the same corner. Then wham! By nature, other reasons force us to follow these tracks which are not made for us. One after the other, each proclaims his own individuality in the same way in order to prove that we are not all the same. That is, not like any one else. At most through our samples of children, wasted opportunities, a sacrificed generation that has the luxury of being able to scarify itself. I would like to make a complaint, but everyone has taken action in all good faith, no doubt.